Monday, December 29, 2014

Reviewing my predictions about 2014

Making New Year's resolutions is a practice that often seems
minimally helpful. After articulating aspirational goals for the year, dedication
to achieving those goals seems rather short-lived, e.g., indicative of
well-intentioned commitments to get in better physical condition, gym memberships
increase sharply in early January but gym visits return to normal levels by
February.

Instead of making resolutions about personal improvement, I find
it useful to think about what may happen in the year ahead (i.e., make some
predictions – my next post) after examining the accuracy of my predictions
about the current year.

My predictions for 2014, taken verbatim from my January 6,
2014, Ethical Musings' post, Predictions
for 2014, are listed below in bold; the annotations indicate where I was
right, wrong, etc.

Five predictions remained unchanged from prior years, which I
had mostly right:

Iraq continues to be headed toward another dictatorship – it
is not entirely evident if this has happened. A new prime minister
eventually replaced Maliki, but Iraq is far from a real democracy.

Afghanistan will become increasingly dysfunctional, especially
after the United States and NATO withdraw – this appears accurate,
sadly, although the US and NATO withdrawal won't be complete until
sometime after 2015

The U.S. economy, and European economies, will continue to
improve, slowly clawing their way back from the recession of 2007-2008.
The stock markets will have another good year, although not as strong as
2014 was.

The U.S. Congress will remain riven by partisanship but avoid a
complete federal breakdown by reaching small compromises such as the one
that resulted in their passing the first federal budget in years.

Digital media will continue to supplant other forms of media; more
content will be free or low-cost, e.g., books will continue to migrate
from paper to various electronic formats. People will rely more on cloud
storage and less on storage that they own, signaling a continuing downward
trend in personal computer purchases. Dissatisfaction with brief forms of
communication (e.g., Twitter) will begin to develop as people seek richer,
deeper relationships.

States will continue to liberalize drug laws, especially those
outlawing marijuana. Similarly, opposition to other hot-button social
issues (abortion, capital punishment, and same sex marriage) will continue
to diminish. Opposition to gun control will be the most controversial
exception to that generalization.

Generalized spirituality will continue to attract adherents from traditional
religious groups that remain tied to legacy buildings, doctrines, and
practices.

Syrian President Assad will remain in power. U.S. efforts to
broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians will go nowhere,
scuttled, if for no other reason, by Israel continuing to build
settlements on disputed land.

These two predictions were only partially correct:

Roll out of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) will continue
to experience significant problems but foes will fail to muster the votes
required for repeal. Instead, small changes will incrementally move the
U.S. toward some form of nationalized healthcare, although the nation will
not achieve that goal for years. Congress proved sufficiently
dysfunctional to prevent enactment of even minor changes to the Affordable
Care Act; despite much sentiment in favor of repeal, momentum is slowly
growing to improve rather than to repeal the Act.

In the 2014 U.S. midterm elections, Republicans will keep control
of the House of Representatives; Democrats will retain – barely – control
of the Senate with the aid of independents and perhaps with the aid of the
Vice President's vote. Republicans not only kept control of the House
of Representatives but also took control of the Senate.

This prediction I got wrong:

And on a celebratory personal note, readership of Ethical Musings
will grow by 50%, as it did in 2013! Ethical Musings' readership grew
only 25%, which is not too shabby but not as good as in 2013.